Lisa M E Kelly on Turning Workplace Inclusion Into Action

For Lisa M E Kelly, building a more inclusive workplace is not an abstract exercise. It means identifying barriers, showing organizations the value of removing them and giving people practical steps they can apply. Across more than 25 years of work, she has approached that challenge through business outreach, diversity and disability consulting, employment counselling, program development, management and training.

Now an independent consultant with MLK Consulting in Toronto, Lisa M E combines four areas of practice: training, research, business development and business strategy. The mix reflects a career shaped less by a single track than by a continuing question: How can organizations make room for more people and benefit from opening their doors wider?

A Career Built Across Functions

Lisa M E’s professional path has crossed the private and nonprofit sectors, as well as entrepreneurship. She co-created CoEd Communications, which developed curriculum-based programs designed to help students engage with subjects in more immediate ways. Its work included a Canadian history comic book and a teaching awards program that became the Governor General’s History Awards in its inaugural year.

That experience brought together educational content, program design and the practical work of securing support. Sales also became a consistent thread. Lisa M E has won grants, arranged private funding for programs and sold memberships for the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Those roles reinforced a lesson that continues to inform her consulting: people are more prepared to support an idea when its value is clear.

Her cross-functional perspective also reflects time spent living across Canada, in England and in Louisville, Kentucky. She additionally worked for several months in India through the Canadian Immigrant Integration program. Exposure to different communities and working environments helped her recognize both meaningful differences and recurring workplace challenges.

Changing Direction at Fifty

At 50, Lisa M E returned to college to become a Career and Work Counsellor. The decision opened a new phase of her career focused on equity, employment and disability. As an employment counsellor and trainer, she advocated for people seeking work that was both meaningful and capable of meeting their financial needs.

She later brought that perspective to the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. There, her work included helping businesses understand diversity, equity and inclusion as a competitive advantage rather than a stand-alone initiative. She served as a business development manager and team lead on the Discover Ability Network, working with organizations interested in building healthier workplace cultures and removing barriers affecting employees and customers.

The connection between inclusion and business development is central to her approach. Instead of separating workplace equity from an organization’s operating priorities, Lisa M E frames it in terms of culture, access and results. The objective is to help clients move from broad commitments toward decisions that can be implemented and evaluated in their own settings.

From Good Intentions to Useful Next Steps

Training is one of the primary ways Lisa M E advances that work. She describes her presentation style as high-energy and somewhat disruptive in a constructive sense. Her aim is to challenge familiar assumptions about inclusion while ensuring participants leave with a concrete list of actions.

Her training and speaking experience has included CBC/Radio-Canada, KPMG globally, universities and colleges across Canada, and conferences including CASE, VRA/CAVEWAS and Cannexus. She has also taught at Humber College in Ontario.

Her academic and professional preparation includes a Bachelor of Arts from McMaster University, a Career and Work Counsellor Diploma from George Brown College and Registered Rehabilitation Professional certification from VRA Canada. These credentials complement experience developed through direct work with job seekers, businesses, funders and program partners.

Choosing Work With Purpose

Lisa M E has retired from working for other organizations, but not from work itself. Independent consulting gives her the ability to select projects where her combination of research, training, sales and strategy can contribute to visible progress.

That choice brings the varied parts of her career together. Curriculum development taught her how to make ideas accessible. Employment counselling kept attention on what workplace decisions mean for individuals. Business development demonstrated the importance of articulating value. Inclusion work connected those skills to the challenge of creating workplaces where more people can participate.

The result is a practical philosophy: opening doors is only the beginning. Organizations also need to examine barriers, communicate why change matters and turn intention into action. Lisa M E’s work focuses on helping them make that transition.